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DEAN PRITCHARD, QMI Agency

WINNIPEG — Four months after their existence sparked a media firestorm, sexually explicit pictures of a Winnipeg judge have resurfaced on the Internet.

Justice Lori Douglas stepped down from active court duty last September following revelations her husband Jack King had posted the pictures on a sex website in 2003.

The pictures were at the heart of a multi-million dollar lawsuit filed by Alex Chapman. Chapman said King -- his former divorce lawyer -- used the pictures to try and lure him into a sexual tryst with Douglas in 2003. Douglas had not yet been appointed to the bench.

The website now posting the pictures bills itself as an "uncensored image hosting site ... where you can upload images for free and show them for your friends and foes."

A representative of the website did not respond to an interview request.

Chapman and his spokesman Sean Sam notified several local media outlets of the pictures' re-emergence on the Internet, arguing it was important people "see the pictures for themselves ... and get the full story."

Chapman could not be reached for comment Thursday.

In September, Justice Joan McKelvey ordered Chapman to surrender all copies of the pictures to King's lawyer. When asked Thursday if Chapman or Sam were responsible for reposting the pictures, Sam said "absolutely not."

"There are plenty of people out there who have these pictures in their possession," Sam claimed. "We turned over the materials we had."

Douglas' lawyer did not return a reporter's phone calls.

Douglas or her lawyers could have a tough time erasing the pictures from the web, said University of Manitoba law professor David Deutscher.

"Once they are out there they are out there," he said.

Deutscher said whoever posted the pictures could possibly face contempt of court charges, if they can be identified. Because the pictures are the subject of a civil proceeding, not a criminal one, "it would be up to the lawyers to do the digging, and that could be difficult," Deutscher said.

Last fall Chapman filed and later dropped multimillion-dollar lawsuits against Douglas and her former law firm, Thompson, Dorfman, Sweatman. A third lawsuit against King was quickly tossed out of court after a judge ruled a $25,000 confidentiality agreement Chapman signed in 2003 remained valid.

King has been charged with three counts of professional misconduct and will face a disciplinary hearing before the Manitoba Law Society. Douglas remains the subject of a review by the Canadian Judicial Council.